RATED X for Mature Eyes Only

He picked up my earrings from the creases of his sheets and held them up to my face. I laughed and thought to myself, ‘He fucked me so hard my jewelry came off,’” writes Lena Chen ’09 in a Sept. 19 post to her blog www.sexandtheivy.com: “The Bleeding Heart Nympho’s Guide to Harvard Life.”

Chen, who is also a Crimson editor and writer for FM (see page 18), guesses that 80 percent of Harvard students “don’t have sex, aren’t having sex, have never had sex.” She’s in the other 20 percent.

She says her website logged 1,500 unique hits in September, and it’s easy to understand why. The blog is detailed, no-holds-barred sexually explicit, politically incorrect, and confessional about her history of bulimia. Her writing is blunt and sometimes pessimistic, laced with philosophical musings on what she perceives to be the woeful state of sex at Harvard.

“At Harvard, I’ve been in situations where guys would rather do problem sets than do me,” says Chen.

Fellow blogger Kameron A. Collins ’09 says Chen’s blog gets people talking about subjects usually left unspoken-of. “People talk about it, but not in a constructive way...I think Lena’s really able to capitalize on the fact that many people are surprised that a Harvard student would talk so candidly about these things.”

Blogging about her “sexcapades” has turned her into a mini-celebrity—as she puts it, a “minor controversy.”

“My ex from the summer stopped talking to me the first time I published an entry,” Chen says. Now that her readership is expanding, “I see my dating options slowly diminishing. I really feel that guys are afraid to date me—I might give them a bad review!”

Her musings about boys have drawn a lot of attention recently—maybe more than she wants. She suggests a love-hate relationship with publicity.

“I just don’t want to mess up anyone else’s life, but I don’t care what the Harvard community reads or knows,” Chen says. “I think that’s one of the reason people read, because I am willing to talk about them. People are so careful at Harvard, because they don’t want to screw up their professional career.”

In a post dated Oct. 1, Chen writes: “Anyway, the point of this post: if any of you care, my life is basically over. As a result of this website and my apparent lack of discretion, everyone knows my business and I kind of want to go into hiding.”

“Okay, here’s a resolution: I think I’m going to throw caution to the wind. And with it, my reputation, but hey, that’s already shot to death. Privacy policies still stand. If you’re my friend and I blog about you, I’ll remove said post/reference at request. Other than that, no holds barred. What’s the point of having a Mather single and a sex blog if you can’t have sex in your single and write about it?”